Intel tipped to be looking for a partner for its AR glasses unit

Google Glass

Intel, like a lot of the other big tech companies including Apple, Google, and Amazon, are working on their own versions of augmented reality glasses or those specs that project content straight to the user’s retina—which is similar to Google Glass. But it looks like Intel doesn’t want to work on this alone. The company is rumoured to be selling a majority stake of its AR glasses division, which is valued at US$350 million. The company is supposedly looking for multiple backers to invest in the project. They’re looking particularly for those “who can contribute to the business with strong sales channels, industry or design expertise, rather than financial backers.”

Intel is already working on these smart glasses that can be paired with smartphones via Bluetooth. They’re said to be working with Taiwan’s Quanta Computer Inc. to bring the product to life and “the technology is known internally as Superlite, but the business to be sold will likely be called Vaunt,” at least based on the report from Bloomberg. The product could be sold on the market as soon as this year but no word on the specific date or price. Intel is supposedly more concerned about showing off the technology to potential customers rather than selling actual units in big numbers. Some of the potential clients include the aforementioned companies already working on their own smart glasses.

Source: BGR

Razer introduces limited edition Razer Phone with gold colored logo at the back

Just in time for the Chinese Spring Festival, Razer is unveiling a limited edition version of its first smartphone. This Gold Edition of the Razer Phone features a gold colored logo at the back of the device. This seems to be the only change made to the device and it also retails with the similar US$699.99 price tag. It’s being sold in the U.S. and Hong Kong. Based on what’s on Razer’s site, it comes in classy looking red packaging, too. There is no word on how many units the company is selling but if you want to get your hands on one, you might want to get one as soon as possible.

Source: Android Authority

‘Mario Kart’ is coming to smartphones

The latest Nintendo IP to make its way to mobile devices is a popular one. The Japanese company just announced that it’s bringing Mario Kart to both Android and iOS. The game is going to be called Mario Kart Tour and it’ll be released within the next financial year, which puts that between April 2018 and March 2019. Nintendo is keeping mum about what we can expect from the game but we’re confident the title will be a popular one as this particular franchise is one of Nintendo’s biggest.

As Fortune points out, the company was careful in wording the release to be a mobile-only release instead of saying which platform it’ll be available on. Nintendo has previously been releasing its mobile games on iOS before Android but the wording suggests both platforms might get it simultaneously. What do you think? Is this something you’d want to play?

Source: The Verge

Google took down over 700,000 malicious Android apps in 2017

There are over 3,500,000 “approved” applications in the Google Play Store but not all of these are useful or fun, a bunch of them are designed to wreak havoc on users lives and that’s where Google has been hard at work to take these bad apps out. The company recently announced it has taken down over 700,000 apps from the Play Store, which is a 70 percent increase from the total removals they’ve done in 2016. “Not only did we remove more bad apps, we were able to identify and action against them earlier,” Google Play product manager Andrew Ahn wrote in a blog post. “99 percent of apps with abusive contents were identified and rejected before anyone could install them.”

Google claims they’re able to do this with the company’s “new machine learning models and techniques.” It made it easier for them to detect the bad apps as well as any of the copycat apps that try to deceive users. Google says they’ve taken down a quarter of a million of these impersonating apps in 2017. They’ve also kept “tens of thousands” of apps with inappropriate content (those that have pornography, hate, illegal activities, and extreme violence) out of the app store. Machine learning has helped the human reviewers make sure these apps and developers were kept away from the Play Store. They’re also working on keeping Potentially Harmful Applications (PHAs) out of the Store, even though these are as Ahn says “small in volume.” Of course, they aren’t 100% successful and have had a few bad apps slip into its system but Google promises they’re working to improve their methods and machine learning models so that they keep these apps out.

Source: The Verge + Inquirer.net